信じたくないわ。魔法使いでもでなければ、納得できないのも事実だ。
Roughly: I don’t want to admit/believe that it’s magic, but I can’t deny that if it wasn’t magic, then it cannot be understood [other way], i.e. there’s no explanation for that other than magic.

//I used the word “magic” instead of “magician”, but I think you’ll understand what I want to say.

I usually gloss over translation comments since, in my experience, they’re usually something like “your line doesn’t have formal equivalence with the Japanese so it’s wrong”, but now I see that your point is different.

My “literal” translation of it (by the way, I think the line is actually 信じたくないが、魔法使いでもなければ、納得できないのも事実だ。) would be “I don’t want to believe it, but even if you’re not a magician, that which I cannot accept to be true is true.”

魔法使いでもなければ -> “even if you’re not a magician”
納得できないのも -> “[it is] also [true] that which I cannot accept [to be true]”
事実だ -> “is true”

That’s not substantially different from the version we used, which ends in “I can’t deny your abilities” — correlate “I can’t deny” with “is true” and “your abilities” with “that which I cannot accept to be true”..

I suppose you can split the sentence as 魔法使いでもなければ、納得できないのも + 事実だ and have it be “The fact that, if you are not a magician then I cannot accept it, is even true”, but that doesn’t make sense and isn’t justified by the pause where the comma is.

And if you’re interpreting the 納得できない as “one cannot understand it”, I don’t agree that that’s how that word is used, especially since the previous clause had でもなければ and not ではなければ.

Then again, Akatsukin disagrees with me (but also disagrees with you), so there’s that.

I was writing a counter-argument, but in the end I came to understanding your point. Btw, how long have you guys been studying Japanese? And how long is enough for one to be qualified for translating anime?

I’d like to list a few examples of usage of 納得できない in Kenkyusha’ Japanese-English Dictionary.
* 納得できないかもしれないが, それでも事実は事実なんだ. You might find it hard to believe, but the facts are the facts.
* 百歩譲ってそれが正しいとしても, 私は納得できない. Even if I have to admit that that is right I’m still not convinced. ｜ Even if you force me to concede that totally, you still don’t convince me.
* 依然としてその説明に私は納得できない. I’m still not convinced by the explanation. ｜ The explanation still ┌doesn’t [fails to] convince me.

Thus 納得できない basically is “cannot accept [something] as truth”. The first example fits even better with the sentence in question: “hard to believe”. OK, I suppose I failed to understand this part right.

An obscure/confusing part is “your abilities” because a verb is ommited in the translation. What is that that he cannot deny? It’s 納得できない that he cannot deny. “Even if you are not magician…I can’t deny that you did something unbelievable”. Well, I suppose that with a stretch of imagination, one can loosely correlate “your abilities” with “納得できない”.

There remain two moot points though.
1. I thought でも means “or something” here. “Dictionary of Particles” by Kawashima proved me wrong, too: this usage is only possible in suggestions.
2. A native of Japanese said that “my interpretation is generally correct”. 参ったな.

As far as your question about our Japanese experience goes, it’s kind of hard to answer. I’ve only taken three years of university-level classes, but I can sort of convince people I know more than that implies and then attribute it to surrounding myself with Japanese media. Akatsukin theoretically knows more Japanese than me.

I don’t consider myself to be proficient in Japanese. With the resources of the internet, when I don’t understand something, I can figure out what it means pretty quickly most of the time, but I wouldn’t answer the question “Do you speak Japanese?” with “Yes”. Maybe Akatsukin would answer differently.

Also, honestly, I don’t think there’s a direct correlation between time spent studying Japanese and ability to translate anime, partly because time spent studying Japanese and ability to understand Japanese are not the same thing, and partly because I wouldn’t know anyway. I’d encourage you to just give it a try if you’re interested in translating; that’s really the only way to tell.

As for the rest of your post, I think you’re too hung up on formal equivalence — that is, every part of the English sentence corresponding exactly to a part of the Japanese sentence. Formal equivalence is not the same as semantic/dynamic equivalence (where two sentences carry the same meaning). “I can’t deny your abilities”, “I can’t deny that did something unbelievable”, etc. all mean essentially the same thing in context — that he’s seen proof of something he never thought possible. I think your interpretation is “generally correct”.

When I translate, I try (not always successfully) to listen to the Japanese, form an image of what that means in my head, and then turn that image into English. This will frequently lose formal equivalence, but formal equivalence doesn’t matter unless you are watching subs to learn Japanese (which is… I guess valid).

Regarding でも, I thought of the でもなければ as ではなければ (which is ではない + an inflection), with a も (again, this is me going back and justifying my interpretation of something I haven’t really thought about). When は and も come together, the は disappears.

信じたくないわ。魔法使いでもでなければ、納得できないのも事実だ。
Roughly: I don’t want to admit/believe that it’s magic, but I can’t deny that if it wasn’t magic, then it cannot be understood [other way], i.e. there’s no explanation for that other than magic.

//I used the word “magic” instead of “magician”, but I think you’ll understand what I want to say.

I usually gloss over translation comments since, in my experience, they’re usually something like “your line doesn’t have formal equivalence with the Japanese so it’s wrong”, but now I see that your point is different.

My “literal” translation of it (by the way, I think the line is actually 信じたくないが、魔法使いでもなければ、納得できないのも事実だ。) would be “I don’t want to believe it, but even if you’re not a magician, that which I cannot accept to be true is true.”

魔法使いでもなければ -> “even if you’re not a magician”
納得できないのも -> “[it is] also [true] that which I cannot accept [to be true]”
事実だ -> “is true”

That’s not substantially different from the version we used, which ends in “I can’t deny your abilities” — correlate “I can’t deny” with “is true” and “your abilities” with “that which I cannot accept to be true”..

I suppose you can split the sentence as 魔法使いでもなければ、納得できないのも + 事実だ and have it be “The fact that, if you are not a magician then I cannot accept it, is even true”, but that doesn’t make sense and isn’t justified by the pause where the comma is.

And if you’re interpreting the 納得できない as “one cannot understand it”, I don’t agree that that’s how that word is used, especially since the previous clause had でもなければ and not ではなければ.

Then again, Akatsukin disagrees with me (but also disagrees with you), so there’s that.

I was writing a counter-argument, but in the end I came to understanding your point. Btw, how long have you guys been studying Japanese? And how long is enough for one to be qualified for translating anime?

I’d like to list a few examples of usage of 納得できない in Kenkyusha’ Japanese-English Dictionary.
* 納得できないかもしれないが, それでも事実は事実なんだ. You might find it hard to believe, but the facts are the facts.
* 百歩譲ってそれが正しいとしても, 私は納得できない. Even if I have to admit that that is right I’m still not convinced. ｜ Even if you force me to concede that totally, you still don’t convince me.
* 依然としてその説明に私は納得できない. I’m still not convinced by the explanation. ｜ The explanation still ┌doesn’t [fails to] convince me.

Thus 納得できない basically is “cannot accept [something] as truth”. The first example fits even better with the sentence in question: “hard to believe”. OK, I suppose I failed to understand this part right.

An obscure/confusing part is “your abilities” because a verb is ommited in the translation. What is that that he cannot deny? It’s 納得できない that he cannot deny. “Even if you are not magician…I can’t deny that you did something unbelievable”. Well, I suppose that with a stretch of imagination, one can loosely correlate “your abilities” with “納得できない”.

There remain two moot points though.
1. I thought でも means “or something” here. “Dictionary of Particles” by Kawashima proved me wrong, too: this usage is only possible in suggestions.
2. A native of Japanese said that “my interpretation is generally correct”. 参ったな.

As far as your question about our Japanese experience goes, it’s kind of hard to answer. I’ve only taken three years of university-level classes, but I can sort of convince people I know more than that implies and then attribute it to surrounding myself with Japanese media. Akatsukin theoretically knows more Japanese than me.

I don’t consider myself to be proficient in Japanese. With the resources of the internet, when I don’t understand something, I can figure out what it means pretty quickly most of the time, but I wouldn’t answer the question “Do you speak Japanese?” with “Yes”. Maybe Akatsukin would answer differently.

Also, honestly, I don’t think there’s a direct correlation between time spent studying Japanese and ability to translate anime, partly because time spent studying Japanese and ability to understand Japanese are not the same thing, and partly because I wouldn’t know anyway. I’d encourage you to just give it a try if you’re interested in translating; that’s really the only way to tell.

As for the rest of your post, I think you’re too hung up on formal equivalence — that is, every part of the English sentence corresponding exactly to a part of the Japanese sentence. Formal equivalence is not the same as semantic/dynamic equivalence (where two sentences carry the same meaning). “I can’t deny your abilities”, “I can’t deny that did something unbelievable”, etc. all mean essentially the same thing in context — that he’s seen proof of something he never thought possible. I think your interpretation is “generally correct”.

When I translate, I try (not always successfully) to listen to the Japanese, form an image of what that means in my head, and then turn that image into English. This will frequently lose formal equivalence, but formal equivalence doesn’t matter unless you are watching subs to learn Japanese (which is… I guess valid).

Regarding でも, I thought of the でもなければ as ではなければ (which is ではない + an inflection), with a も (again, this is me going back and justifying my interpretation of something I haven’t really thought about). When は and も come together, the は disappears.